4. GET REALISTIC RECOMMENDATIONS.
Finally, LinkedIn allows other people to post recommendations. The problem with these endorsements is that everyone suspects you’ve simply queued up your best pals to be sock puppets that say nice things.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to get some recommendations, but you want them to be realistic and believable, which means that they can’t attempt to paint you as the most wonderful person in the world.
Ideally you want recommendations that reinforce the relevance of your résumé. Therefore, you may want to change or switch them, depending on whether you’re job hunting or not, or on the type of job you’re pursuing.
5. DON’T BLOG UNLESS YOU’RE A NATURAL.
Almost everybody who starts blogging gives up after a few weeks, after which the posts become few and far between, and eventually peter out altogether. What remains is an out-of-date blog that’s a testament to your inability to blog regularly.
Blogging with substantial content is easy when you start (because everyone has something to say) but gets more difficult over time. I say this as a professional blogger who (as of this writing) has posted content every business day since February 2007.
If you’re determined to blog, be realistic rather than ambitious. If you think you can post once a week, set a schedule to post every two weeks or every month. That way you’re less likely to run out of things to say.
Microblogging (as on Twitter) is less of an issue because there’s no need to constantly create anything of substance. In this case you’re generally alerting people to content they might find useful or interesting, rather than creating it yourself.
Finally, don’t expect your blog to generate lots of traffic. Very few blogs acquire a significant number of readers. Most of the time, the value of the blog is in providing more detail—about who you are and how you think—to people who are already interested in you.
6. SET RULES FOR YOUR ONLINE COMMENTING.
Because a poorly placed remark or off-color joke by an employee can damage a company’s brand image, most big firms have very specific guidelines for what employees can and can’t write online.
The same is true for your brand image. You are not doing yourself any favors by getting your brand name associated with discussions of anything that’s irrelevant to your career. That’s especially true if the discussions are political, religious, or sexual in nature.
If you feel that you simply must comment on such forums, use a pseudonym, not your brand name, and be aware that even then you might still be outed. Many careers have been ruined this way.
SHORTCUT
SOCIAL MEDIA
YOUR personal brand will define how people see you.
GET a professional portrait and expunge unprofessional photos.
CUSTOMIZE your résumé to match your career goals.
SOLICIT recommendations that are realistic and relevant.
AVOID blogging unless you’re being paid to do so.
KEEP your irrelevant opinions off the Internet.
SECRET 14
How to Shine in a Meeting
Business meetings have never been more popular. About 25 million meetings take place every day in corporate America alone. Conservatively, at least half of that time is wasted by aimless presentations and pointless discussions.
Because of this, attend business meetings sparingly and only if it advances your own agenda. Remember: if you spend only ninety minutes a day (on average) in meetings, by the time you’re sixty-five they will have consumed eight years of your working life.
In “Secret 18. How to Hold a Productive Meeting,” I explain how to make your own meetings go smoothly. In this secret I explain how to attend only those meetings that are useful, and how to work your own agenda into the meetings you do attend.
1. KNOW YOUR OWN AGENDA.
A business meeting consumes time, and since you have a limited amount of time, you want to attend only those business meetings that move you closer to your goals. This is impossible if you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish.
If you do decide to attend a business meeting, you want the actions you take during the meeting to move you closer to your goals. Once again, impossible if you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish.
Therefore, whenever you are confronted with the opportunity to attend a meeting, you should first review your personal and career goals so you can assess whether it will be time well spent, and how you’ll spend the time if you attend.
2. KNOW WHY THE MEETING WAS CALLED.
Your strategy for dealing with a meeting varies according to the type of meeting. People call meetings for seven reasons:
1. To get you to decide something. The meeting caller wants to persuade or convince you to make a decision.
2. To hone their own ideas. The meeting caller wants the benefit of your experience and creativity on his or her own project.
3. To convey information. The meeting caller has information that he or she wants to communicate, but is too lazy to create a stand-alone document.
4. To test out a presentation. The meeting caller wants to rehearse a presentation in front of a live audience.
5. To accomplish group writing. The meeting caller intends to use the creation of a document to drive toward a consensus decision.
6. To prove their own importance. The meeting caller is establishing his or her place in the pecking order by wasting other people’s time.
7. To fulfill a process step. The meeting caller is fulfilling a commitment to have regular meetings on a particular subject.
As a general rule, meetings you’re asked to attend due to reasons 1 or 2 are more likely to be useful to you than meetings you’re asked to attend due to reasons 3 through 7. However (and unfortunately), you probably will not be able to avoid all the meetings that are not useful to you, especially if they’re called by your boss or the coworkers who’ve got clout.
3. LIMIT YOUR MEETING ATTENDANCE.
As explained above, some meetings are mandatory while others are not. If you’re absolutely required to attend a meeting, skip to Step 4.
However, if there’s any question as to whether your presence is required, compare your own goals to the meeting’s reason and decide whether the benefit of attending is greater than the benefit of doing something else. To make this decision, ask yourself two questions: “What’s in it for me?” and “What if I pass on it?”
Example 1:
Your boss’s peer has asked the entire division (including his group and your boss’s) to attend a meeting where the peer will give the presentation that he’s planning to give to top management next week. You ask yourself:
1. What’s in it for me? I’ll get some visibility with my boss’s peer and probably my own boss, since she’ll probably attend. I may also get a better sense of how the peer approaches problems, which might prove useful in the future. I will also have the opportunity before and after to socialize with coworkers.
2. What if I pass on it? Since many of my coworkers might attend, if I don’t show up, everyone might wonder why I’m not there. In addition, the boss’s peer might take my absence as an insult, making things more difficult for my own boss.
In this case you probably want to attend.
Example 2:
You’re an engineering manager whom the marketing group has invited to a group writing session for a press release about a new product design. You ask:
1. What’s in it for me? I’ll be able to prevent the marketing group from saying something stupid or inaccurate.
2. What if I pass on it? I won’t waste two hours arguing about trivia and they’ll have to run the press release by me anyway when they’re done.
In this case you pass. Rather than attending, you send an e-mail with the technical specs you think should be included, along with a reminder that you’d like to review the final version before it’s released to the press.
After asking the two questions (as shown in the exa
mples above), decide whether it makes sense for you to attend. If it does, skip to Step 4.
If it doesn’t make sense for you to attend, create an excuse that’s plausible but not insulting.
WRONG:
“It sounds like a waste of time.”
“I have better things to do.”
RIGHT:
“I have a scheduling conflict.”
“I have to meet a deadline.”
4. PREPARE YOURSELF WELL.
If you’ve gotten to this step, you’re definitely attending the meeting. Your goal is now to make certain that you can contribute in a way that reinforces your agenda, even if that only means looking good at the meeting.
Research the background of the topics that will be discussed. This is easy if there’s a published agenda. If there isn’t, ask whoever called the meeting what will be discussed and how you should best prepare.
For example, suppose you’re a marketing manager whose goal is to create advertisements that generate sales leads. You’ve been asked to a meeting with the sales team to discuss how the company can sell more to the automobile industry.
In accordance with Step 3, you ask yourself:
1. What’s in it for me? The salespeople may know customers who are willing to endorse us publicly in our advertisements.
2. What if I pass on it? It will seem as if marketing doesn’t care about the sales team and can’t be bothered to help them out.
On the basis of your answers, you decide to attend. Because you’re going to be asking the salespeople for a favor (sharing their personal contacts with you), you want to come into the meeting with something that helps the salespeople.
You therefore get online and read up on buying trends in the automobile industry. You now have something substantive to contribute, which will help you work your own agenda (getting the contact names).
5. GATHER YOUR IDEAS.
As the meeting progresses, take notes (either mentally, on your device, or on paper) about what’s said. Look for areas of discussion where you might be able to either add value (which will burnish your reputation) or push your own agenda.
These notes are important because when you do say something, you want it to come out as a complete thought, rather than a half-prepared remark that peters out in the middle because you can’t remember exactly what you were going to say.
6. READ THE ROOM, THEN CONTRIBUTE.
Novice meeting attendees either blurt out their ideas and opinions at the first break in the conversation or delay saying something until after the meeting has moved on to another topic.
Experienced meeting attendees know that the trick to contributing to a meeting (and looking good in the process) is to make your remarks toward the end of that part of the discussion.
When you express your own view or add your contribution, speak confidently and in complete sentences; then, if appropriate, ask a question that you feel will move the discussion in a direction in which you’d like to see the meeting go.
For example, suppose you’re in the marketing/sales meeting described in Step 4. To recap, you want the salespeople to use their contacts to give you reference accounts for an advertisement. In preparation for the meeting, you’ve researched buying habits in the automotive industry.
During the meeting a salesperson complains that it’s difficult to get CEOs of auto-supply firms to return calls. Several other salespeople echo this sentiment. When you sense that the topic is almost exhausted, you say, “My research into buying patterns in the automotive industry says that what really motivates CEOs to buy from a vendor is a recommendation from another CEO. What if we ran an ad featuring a CEO who’s our current customer?”
Bringing up your idea at this point—when other people have spoken their minds—is far more likely to result in the support of the other attendees than if, for example, you tried to get your market research, or your request for a reference account, directly onto the agenda.
SHORTCUT
ATTENDING MEETINGS
TREAT meetings as a possible way to advance your agenda.
SOME types of meetings can be useful; others are usually not.
DECIDE whether each meeting will be useful or useless.
EITHER decline to attend or prepare well; no in-between.
TAKE notes so you can speak coherently when it’s your turn.
SPEAK confidently and, if appropriate, segue into your agenda.
PART III
How to Manage Your Employees
Although more than a million books have been published on the subject of management, managing employees is not nearly as complicated as the consultants (who write most of the books) try to make it out to be.
Good management is mostly a matter of common sense and a few easily mastered techniques. This part of the book helps make common sense, well, more common. It lays out both the strategic foundation of good management and specific tactics to build and grow a winning team.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
“What Truly Great Bosses Believe” lays out the interlocking and self-reinforcing belief system that is the core of every useful management technique, based on more than thirty years of observing the very best managers in action.
“How to Be a Better Boss” gives twelve essential rules to ensure that you continue to focus on what’s really important—managing people—even when other concerns vie to capture your attention.
“How to Hire a Top Performer” addresses the all-important task of finding the best people to be on your team. When you’ve got the right people, good management becomes far easier.
“How to Hold a Productive Meeting” provides guidelines for keeping your meetings on track and moving toward a goal, without consuming time and effort that could better be spent elsewhere.
“How to Offer Criticism” explains how to start a conversation about problematic behavior in a way that doesn’t offend the employee but instead lays the groundwork for a change in that employee’s behavior.
“How to Redirect a Complainer” shows how to help employees who are stuck on a problem move gradually into finding their own solution, taking your advice, or focusing on something more productive.
“How to Fire Somebody” covers the most difficult task you’ll ever undertake at work: telling an employee that he or she no longer has a job, with a minimum of damage to the employee, yourself, and the rest of the team.
SECRET 15
What Truly Great Bosses Believe
The most successful bosses—and the ones employees respect and follow most easily, and who are most likely to be promoted—tend to share the following eight core beliefs:
1. BUSINESS IS AN ECOSYSTEM, NOT A BATTLEFIELD.
Average bosses see business as a conflict among companies, departments, and groups. They build armies of troops to order about, demonize competitors as “enemies,” and treat customers as territory to be conquered.
Great bosses see business as a symbiosis through which the most diverse firm is most likely to survive and thrive. They create teams that adapt easily to new markets and can quickly form partnerships with other companies, customers… and even competitors.
2. A COMPANY IS A COMMUNITY, NOT A MACHINE.
Average bosses consider their companies machines with employees as cogs. They create rigid structures with rigid rules and then try to maintain control by pulling levers and steering the ship.
Great bosses see their companies as collections of individual hopes and dreams, all connected to a higher purpose. They inspire employees to dedicate themselves to the success of their peers and therefore to the community—and company—at large.
3. MANAGEMENT IS SERVICE, NOT CONTROL.
Average bosses want employees to do exactly what they’re told. They’re hyper-aware of anything that smacks of insubordination and create environments in which individual initiative is squelched by the “wait and see what the boss says” mentality.
Great bosses set a general direction and then commit to
obtaining the resources their employees need to get the job done. They push decision-making downward, allowing teams to form their own rules, and intervene only in emergencies.
4. EMPLOYEES ARE PEERS, NOT CHILDREN.
Average bosses see employees as inferior, immature beings who simply can’t be trusted if not overseen by a patriarchal management. Employees take their cues from this attitude and expend energy on looking busy and covering their behinds.
Great bosses treat every employee as if he or she were the most important person in the firm. Excellence is expected everywhere, from the loading dock to the boardroom, and as a result, employees do their best work for themselves, the boss, and the company.
5. MOTIVATION COMES FROM VISION, NOT FEAR.
Average bosses see fear—of getting fired, of ridicule, of loss of privilege—as a crucial means of motivating people. As a result, employees and managers alike become paralyzed and unable to make risky decisions, even when those decisions are crucial to the survival of the firm.
Great bosses inspire people to see a better future and how they’ll be a part of it. Employees work harder when they believe in the organization’s goals, truly enjoy what they’re doing, and (of course) know they’ll share in the rewards.
Business Without the Bullsh*t Page 7